The Three Landmines That Could Kill the Korea Deal

A denuclearization deal with North Korea is more within reach than anyone could
have thought possible a very short time ago. Thanks to the tireless diplomatic
work of Moon Jae In of South Korea and the unexpectedly adept diplomatic work
of Kim Jong Un of North Korea, a joint statement between North Korea and the
United States exists and the impossible is suddenly under way.

Those who dismiss the the joint agreement as vague and vacuous and light on
detail forget how far the language of the joint declaration has traveled since
Trump’s first "fire
and fury like the world has never seen" attempt at diplomacy. They
also commit the error of comparing the joint statement to history’s final agreements
rather than to other first meetings. The diplomacy may also have more content
than the joint statement reveals, since some steps seem to have been negotiated
that have not yet been made public.

The blueprint for any eventual nuclear deal has long been clear. In fact, thanks
to recent revelations by Joel S. Wit who worked on the Agreed Framework with
North Korea and who was one of a very few people to take part in informal meetings
with North Korean officials in 2013, it is now known that that blueprint has
been seriously laid out on the workbench for much longer than anyone thought.

Wit says
that Kim Jong UN always intended North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as a
deterrent against American bullying and aggression. As early as June of 2013,
North Korea’s National Defense Commission declared that it was willing to negotiate
denuclearization. The National Defense Commission is chaired by Kim Jong UN
himself. And as early as 2013, the formula was clear: North Korea would erase
its nuclear weapons program in exchange for U.S. guarantees that it would cease
its "hostile policy" of political, economic and security threats.

That original 2013 formula – elimination of the nuclear deterrence contingent
on elimination of the need for deterrence – has been repeated unbroken since then.
North Korea’s Deputy Ambassador Kim In-Ryong put
it this way to UN Secretary-General António Guterres in August
of 2017: “As long as the US hostile policy and nuclear threat continue, the
DPRK, no matter who may say what, will never place its self-defensive nuclear
deterrence on the negotiating table.” Ju Yong Chol, a North Korean diplomat,
expressed the formulation exactly
the same way.

The same conditional North Korean formulation was expressed by Foreign Minister
Ri Yong-ho in August of 2017. RI
said “We will, under no circumstances, put the nukes and ballistic rockets
on the negotiating table. . . . unless the hostile policy and nuclear threat
of the US against the D.P.R.K. are fundamentally eliminated.” The next month,
RI Yong-ho explained
to the UN that its nuclear program is “to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent
for putting an end to nuclear threat of the US and for preventing its military
invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the
US”

Most importantly, Kim Jong UN, himself, has also expressed
this conditional formulation. Kim has stated
that “Our final goal is to establish the equilibrium of real force with the
US and make the US rulers dare not talk about military options.”

So, the blueprint for successful nuclear negotiations has long been clear.
There are three criteria: verifying that North Korea has dismantled its nuclear
weapons program, security guarantees that ensure the end of America’s hostile
policy toward North Korea, and the willingness of an American administration
to listen to the North Korean conditional formulation and to engage in dialogue
with North Korea.

But the really hard part is not making the deal, it is not breaking the deal.
And the three criteria for making it are precisely the three landmines that
could break it.

Foreign Obstacles

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was dismissive and critical of the joint
statement because he
argued that the agreement was asymmetrical: "What the United States
has gained is vague and unverifiable at best. What North Korea has gained, however,
is tangible and lasting." By what is "tangible," Schumer might
have meant "international legitimacy." But, Schumer gets the asymmetry
almost impossibly backwards. The main thing the US gave North Korea is a commitment
"to provide security guarantees"; the main thing North Korea promised
was to "work towards complete denuclearization." The North Korean
promise is very specific and entirely verifiable; the American promise is "vague
and unverifiable."

The first of the three elements of the nuclear negotiation formula is that
North Korea will eliminate its nuclear weapons program. Nuclear disarmament
is entirely verifiable by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The
obstacle to this element is the lesson North Korea has surely learned from Iran’s
experience at nuclear deal making with Trump. How do you force the other side
to keep their end of the deal, if you are keeping your end of the deal, if independent
verification is insufficient to verify that you are?

America was bound to continue to honor the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran as long as Iran was verified to be in compliance
with their end of the deal. But, after eleven uninterrupted IAEA reports confirming
that Iran
was fully complying with their obligations under the agreement, Donald Trump
reneged on America’s commitment and pulled out of the deal.

So, how can North Korea trust that the US will honor the verification process
and agree to eliminate its nuclear weapons? That is the first landmine that
could kill the deal.

The second potential landmine is the American commitment to provide security
guarantees. How do you verify a promise not to act with hostility? Once you
give up your nuclear weapons, it takes a very long time to get them back, if
you can get them back at all. But a promise not to be hostile is hard to enforce
and easy to break.

Again, the lesson learned from Iran must be pounding in Korean ears. The North
Korean formula was clear that American hostility could take an economic, as
well as a security, form. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on May 13 that
the US would lift
the sanctions on North Korea in exchange for North Korea completely dismantling
its nuclear weapons program. He promised "peace
and prosperity" if North Korea "denuclearized." But when
the US promised to soften economic hostility against Iran in return for Iran’s
denuclearization commitments, the pulse of the promised sanction relief was
very hard to find. America not only failed to fulfill its sanctions promise,
it also made it very difficult for the rest of the world to fulfill theirs.

And the lesson comes not only from Iran. North Korea can draw on its own experience.
The 2005 nuclear agreement between North Korea and the US fell apart in part
because the US undertook what Noam Chomsky, in What We Say Goes, called
"economic warfare."

And the lesson is not just in economics but in security as well. The Agreed
Framework of 1994 included assurances not unlike the present ones: America would
stop threatening North Korea. But then George W. Bush admitted North Korea into
the Axis of Evil along with Iran and Iraq. It then invaded Iraq. And in 2002
the US explicitly named North Korea in its nuclear posture review as a country
it should be prepared to drop a nuclear bomb on.

America’s past history of violating its security assurances is what made National
Security Advisor John Bolton’s suggestion that the best model for North Korean
denuclearization was the Libyan model – the model that saw Libya attacked and
Gadhafi murdered – so threatening and upsetting to North Korea.

It might also seem concerning that Kim Jong UN put it in writing in the joint
statement that he "commits to work towards complete denuclearization,"
while Trump, though vaguely committing in the preamble "to provide security
guarantees" committed to no specifics. None of the four points in the statement
address American security guarantees to North Korea with Trump announcing only
after the announcement, and not in writing, that America would end American-South
Korean war games. However, this concern was toned down by historian and expert
on US-North Korean nuclear diplomacy Leon Sigal who told me in a correspondence
that "Not everything needs to be put into writing. . .. The issue is not
what was said in the joint statement but whether both sides will do what they
say." Though, he added that the expectation is that "as we moved forward,
a roadmap and verification protocol will be clearly spelled out in writing to
avoid ambiguity that can be exploited by one side or the other and turn into
a stumbling block."

So, that is the second potential landmine. How does North Korea ensure that
the U.S. will honor its security guarantees and, so, be confident they can eliminate
their deterrent?

Domestic Obstacles

In September 2017, Jimmy Carter said
that the US should engage directly with Kim Jong Un. “I would send my top person
to Pyongyang immediately, if I didn’t go myself,” Carter said. That was Trump’s
contribution to all the work done by North and South Korean diplomats: he was
willing to talk directly to Kim Jong UN

But if the first two landmines lie in Pyongyang, the third lies in Washington.
Because there are forces in Washington that don’t want Trump to talk to Kim
and who don’t want nuclear negotiations to work.

These forces are willing to sacrifice a denuclearized North Korea because in
their geopolitical game, North Korea is not the king, but a pawn. The king is
China.

Ending the Korean war means ending arms contracts. There is a lot of money
to be made defending South Korea from a nuclear threat from the North. Gareth
Porter has argued
that funding for "a very expensive national missile defense system"
has played a role in killing previous US-North Korea nuclear agreements.

But the even bigger reason is China. A nuclear agreement with North Korea means
a threat reduction on the Korean peninsula. But that threat provides the rational
for US troops in the region. And troops in the region are an important part
of America’s pivot to Asia, which is a euphemism for America’s posture against
China.

A crucial part of America’s overall foreign policy posture is the prevention
of the rise of any country that threatens American hegemony. As early as 1992,
the Wolfowitz Doctrine clearly stated the goal of American foreign policy as
preventing "any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources
would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power."
In other words, American foreign policy is focussed on preserving American hegemony
and preventing the rise of any country that threatens it. Obama’s pivot to Asia
represented the recognition that the focus of that policy was China. In October
2011, Secretary of State Clinton said China was that rising challenge and defined
it as a threat. Meeting that threat meant containing China, and containing China
meant building up military bases in East Asia and firming up alliances with
Asian allies like South Korea.

Reese Erlich reports that Christine Ahn, co-founder of the Korea Policy Institute,
told him that US
troops in South Korea are not a defensive force. They are a projection of
"US power in the region aimed at challenging China and making sure pro-U.S.
regional governments stay in power. . .. The bases insure US political, military
and economic interests."

Peace with North Korea threatens that strategy, and to some in Washington,
that foreign policy priority takes precedent over denuclearizing North Korea:
the Chinese threat to American hegemony looms larger than the nuclear threat
from North Korea.

These then are the three possible landmines that could kill the North Korea
nuclear deal. The blueprint for a successful deal includes verifying that North
Korea has dismantled its nuclear weapons program, security guarantees that ensure
the end of America’s hostile policy toward North Korea, and the willingness
of an American administration to listen to the North Korean conditional formulation
and to engage in dialogue with North Korea. And those are precisely the three
things that could kill it. America has an untrustworthy history of verifying
the other nation’s compliance with their side of an agreement and an equally
untrustworthy history of complying with theirs. And there are powerful forces
in Washington that don’t even want America and North Korea to reach an agreement.

Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns
in US foreign policy and history.